


Contrast

by aarid



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:17:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aarid/pseuds/aarid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's an average town, nothing too noteworthy. Except, to say that would be a lie, and you are quite aware of this. You're getting pretty good at lying, though. After all, anything is better than facing the mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Color Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> This probably isn't going to be many chapters long. Maybe six or so, but I'm not putting a definite number on it yet! Writing this was a challenge.

You will be damned if you let the boy down the street control your life.

It's a small town, insignificant on the maps, and the smallest fraction the size of the big Texas city you're from, but you know better than anyone that the unlikeliest locations hold the greatest treasures. There is no questioning the correlation between these two things. Oil struck in the barest of deserts, diamonds in the rough, your car keys sitting in plain sight after an hour of searching every corner of your house--it's elementary. Things appear where you least expect them to. At times, they consist of things you want. Other times, things you need. On all counts, you're lucky to have found them.

But you know it better than anyone.

The treasure in question, here, is something that you honestly never expected to want _or_ need. To think of your attachment to it sends chills down your spine, and there simply is no denying the multitude of dreams that have been plagued by its image. Night after night, it comes to you in the form of green streaking grey and black and tan, sparking with life and burning with an overwhelming sense of determination that crackles in the pit of your stomach every time you glimpse it. It pierces straight through skin and bones and muscle, wrenching its way into your heart and settling deep within its confines to secrete molten infatuation that sets every vein on fire and turns every nerve ending into an ember on the end of the after-sex cigarette that is your existence post-experience with that one-of-a-kind gem. If you were to be one-hundred percent honest, and quite possibly a little blunt, you would be forced to admit to the fear that stands in the shadow of the fire you're quickly becoming addicted to. While not as persuasive as the warmth, it has the capabilities of being just as consuming.

But you will be damned if you let the boy down the street control your life.

It's sunny quite often in this town. It's still far enough south that winter is a thing of myth, and anything below seventy degrees is jacket weather, and God forbid the clouds ever cover that clear blue sky. It's sort of a secret that you hate that part of living here. That truest blue color, expanding as far as the eye can see, is something of a treasure to your treasure. It's supposed to be a calming color--melancholy, even--but you never feel that when you see it. All it does to you is throw sharp stones of jealousy in your general direction that always manage to strike you right in the feelings. You wish every day that you could blanket every inch of the celestial canvas with a sickly grey.

But God forbid the clouds ever cover that clear blue sky.

Your treasure's fixation on the cobalt hue colors you an ironic shade of green. You hate it when you use that word in a serious sense. Irony is serious business, but so is this obsession. It gazes on sapphires with the fondest smile, and gains a halo of joy at the sight of any cerulean beauty it happens upon. You find it sickening that a part of the spectrum often labelled "cool" has the audacity to draw that perfect shade of emerald away from you for even a tenth of a second, let alone for moment after precious moment. You've spent far too many minutes lost in thought about this. Your treasure must think you to be a ridiculous space case.

But you will be damned if you let the boy down the street control your life.

The sun is far too bright here. You've always been uncomfortable with the sun in your eyes, even farther north where it doesn't infect everything it touches with blinding reflections, but here, it's even worse than Texas, and you never leave your bed without your sunglasses on. Of course, you never did before, either, but if anyone else had eyes like yours, they would find reasons to hide them, too. It isn't like you're personally ashamed of them, but you simply do not have time to explain to curious pedestrians, classmates, acquaintances, or authority figures that you do not actually know why your eyes are this particular shade of orange. It wouldn't be hard, and you suppose that after a while, the public could theoretically begin to speak for you.

But you never leave your bed without your sunglasses on.

The only other time you're ever caught without them is in the shower. You love your showers as much as you've come to hate them, which is only marginally less than you've come to hate the color blue. They're a time to relax, and a time to think. Unfortunately, the latter of the two acts has brought you nothing but grief lately. You take even longer than you used to, but you never feel rested or soothed anymore. The only thing worse than being in the shower in recent days is getting out of it. For those few moments, you're exposed, not only in flesh, but in face. You stand in front of the mirror as the fog clears, and you can see the reflecting fire before your image is even halfway in focus. You hate it. They're so different, but that isn't the problem. They're bright and noticeable, but that isn't it either. They're _orange_ , and it makes everything you pride yourself on crumble. You can reach and struggle, writhe and scream, but it never breaches the surface. It wouldn't matter if it could, and you're convinced of that. If your treasure ever saw, you'd never be able to face the light of day, shades or no. It always ends the same. You turn away from the mirror as you pull on the soft fabric of your clothes. Next, you ignore the flare of color in your peripheral vision as you sculpt your hair into perfect shape. Finally, you reach for the angled lenses of your shades, and slide them into place on the bridge of your nose, effectively ridding yourself and the world around you of the view of your freakish eyes before you exit the room and face the day. They're orange.

The _opposite_ of blue.

But you will be **_right fucking damned_** if you let the boy down the street control your life.


	2. Sunglasses

The thing you always notice first is the pair of sunglasses.

Texas is hot and dry, but you were kind of expecting that when you moved in a few years ago. Still, you're not complaining; the town might be kind of bland, but adventure can be found anywhere. Sure, there are more open fields than woods, and the schools are tiny, and there's no movie theater in town. Sure, the cops will actually stop you and make you go home if you're out past eleven on a week night. And sure, you've only got a couple of friends, and only one of them is always ready to walk around town in 95-degree weather only to end up listening to you prattle on about things you're sure they don't care about. You never even do anything productive, or vaguely risky.

But, adventure can be found anywhere.

Sometimes you wonder how he learned to style his hair like that. Your own flips naturally, and it's all you can do to just get it brushed forward and into something manageable... but he takes his personal hairstyling to a whole new level of artistic prowess. It's not enough to have natural platinum blond hair with a sun-kissed sheen to make any teenage girl jealous. He has to make it look perfect every day. He's actually smacked you for touching it before. You often ask yourself how he manages to keep it that fantastic all day long. You could study his hair for hours, embarrassing as that is.

Still, the thing you always notice first is the pair of sunglasses.

When the boy down the street had moved in, you'd only been living here for about eight months. He immediately made a concrete impression, and you'll never forget the day he moved in. The attention in the high school had just barely been shifted away from you by then, and when this blond-haired enigma came in, everyone's eyes easily found him, and yours were no different. Of course, even the other friends you had made were talking about him. You were lucky, though; you were the only high school kids on your street, so you had more excuses to try to get to know him. You had approached his house with caution that Saturday morning, a little nervous to try to make a new friend, but eager. He answered the door.

You'll never forget that day.

He has freckles. They dot his cheek bones and his ears, trailing down the back of his neck and his arms. You're sure his shoulders are covered, too, but you've never seen them, because he never takes his shirt off. He even refuses to swim in the summer. You begin to entertain the idea that it's because he's embarrassed about the freckles, but you quickly change your theory to one of two things. Either he can't swim, or he burns like dry paper. You can't help but think it would be hilarious to see him with glowing pink skin, but then you just start wondering if it would leave more freckles on him. You remember the first day you met him, and seeing a cluster of three freckles entirely too close to one another just to the right of the tip of his nose.

But the thing you noticed first was the pair of sunglasses.

He was quiet, that first meeting. He introduced himself to you, but for the most part, he just walked around town with you and listened to you as you chattered on and on about this building and that as you passed by; you hadn't even meant to give him a tour, but somehow, he makes you feel comfortable damn near constantly, and that day was no different. From then on, you met up nearly every day, and you've considered him your best friend for a pretty long time now. He was adopted into your circle of friends, and as far as you can tell, he's settled himself in pretty nicely, even though he keeps his walls up high and thick and electrified. Despite that, though, you get a distinct feeling that he favors you over the others just as you favor him. Maybe you have that same effect on him. It probably doesn't compare to how relaxed he gets you, though. He still doesn't talk all that much in front of crowds, but if he's standing near you, it's pretty much impossible to get you to shut up. You can't help it, though.

He makes you feel comfortable.

You've speculated about what's behind that tinted glass. You've caught vague glimpses of the shape of his eyes, when you've looked for them, but you still don't know if he's hiding something. He literally never takes them off. He has slept with the damn things on at your house before. It's just really weird for you to never have seen your best friend's eyes, you think. You've never really bothered him about it, though. It's his privacy, and it's obviously pretty important to him. But because of your curiosity, you've wanted to steal them before. You've almost done it once or twice, when he was asleep, but what good would that do? Unless he's hiding a scar, removing the shades when his eyes are closed would be pointless, you've decided. It's not until you've been attached to his hip for about two consistent years that it finally dawns on you that this obsession with his sunglasses has become something special for you.

The boy down the street has become your personal adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jake's point of view was much easier for me, I think, but I would still greatly benefit from any constructive criticism you can drum up for me, about Jake's OR Dirk's characterization!

**Author's Note:**

> I'd really like some feedback on this! If you have any constructive criticism, fire away, my friends! As I said before, writing Dirk was a challenge.


End file.
